In what isn't a SNL sketch, Sarah Failin calls out Joe Biden for being old /in the Senate too long:

"And I do look forward to Thursday night and debating Sen. Joe Biden. We’re gonna talk about those new ideas, new energy for America. I’m looking forward to meeting him too. I’ve never met him before, but I’ve been hearing about his Senate speeches since I was in like second grade."

McCain: "Of course not. But, look, I understand this day and age of 'gotcha' journalism. Is that a pizza place? In a conversation with someone who you didn’t hear … the question very well, you don’t know the context of the conversation, grab a phrase. Gov. Palin and I agree that you don’t announce that you’re going to attack another country."

Conservative wankrag the NY Sun to shut down, thanks to its buddies in the White House, Congress.

“Among other problems that we faced,” the president and editor, Seth Lipsky said, “was the fact that this month, not to mention this week, has been one of the worst in a century in which to be trying to raise capital, and in the end we were out not only of money but time.”

Its just too bad a lot of people who weren't arrogant, sanctimonious knuckledraggers were hurt by this. Otherwise, good. Karma's a bitch, innit. Suck it.

Paraguay President Fernando Lugo, while attending both the United Nations General Assembly meetings and the Clinton Global Initiative, shared with friends over dinner some of the other meetings he had been having in New York. He met this head of state. . .and that head of state. . .and so on. . . . . .but then the room went silent and then broke into subdued laughter when he confided that he was approached about meeting with GOP Vice Presidential candidate and Alaska Governor Sarah Palin. President Lugo turned the meeting down.

Yeah.... that's the ticket. Satan's porcine handmaiden -- who still isn't in prison -- rose up to chat with minion and protege' Sean insHannity about the upcoming vice presidential debate. From Newshounds:

Rove said, “The real question on this debate is gonna be, from Palin's perspective, is Palin gonna go out there and are we gonna see the woman that we saw in Dayton, Ohio and at the convention and, you know, comfortable in herself, or are they gonna have over-prepped her, stuffed too much information in her mind and made her a little uncomfortable? Because she's really good when... just talking with people.”

'Cause, golly, like, you can't have too much information in your widdle head if you want to be the vice pweznit of the United States!!1!

Hannity added, “But there is always that danger, you say, about over-prepping a candidate,” citing Ronald Reagan's first debate with Walter Mondale as an example.

Howard Wolfson sounded like he was trying not to laugh when he said, “There we go, fucking Reagan... I don't know if over-preparedness was the problem with that Katie Couric interview. I think when you're asked what your foreign policy experience is and you keep talking about the fact that you can see Russia from the state where you are the governor of, that's not a question of over-preparedness. That's just not knowing what to say.”

"And why the fuck haven't you been arrested yet?" he should have asked, while punching the corpulant pusbag repeatedly in the face.

Hell, with expectations set so low, she'd have to blow dead goats on stage while sticking sporks in her eyes and crapping on the flag in order to be seen the loser. Mike Lupica:

There will be those who declare her a winner on Thursday night in St. Louis if she remains standing. Sen. Joe Biden will be called out for bullying her or patronizing her if he comes close to breaking arbitrary rules that would never be set up for a male candidate running against him. It won't change what she is and has been from the start, which means a prop.

For a nasty old fossil who still likes to believe he's some kind of "maverick."

Republicans said Pelosi may have lost votes with a floor speech they considered too partisan. "We could have gotten it if it were not for this partisan speech that Speaker Pelosi gave,” Boehner said. Added Rep. Chris Shays, a Connecticut Republican who also voted for the bill: “Nancy blew it.” "That is an absurd accusation at a time when our country is in deep economic distress," a Pelosi spokesman fired back."You don't vote on a speech, you vote on a bill."

Aaaafuckingmazing. The tough guy bad-assed mofo daddy figures who always promise that they, and only they, can protect us from all the scary things hiding under our beds actually changed their votes because a mean ole bitch who doesn't know her place said really mean things about them?Paaafuckingthetic.

Frankly, I don't understand a word of it. I can't even balance my damned checking account because of too many impulse buys of Chocolate Funyons or whatever completely useless thing it is I'm wasting my money on. But this I understand. It's a simple enough idea: just tell us how the money is going to be spent. Open government. Accountability. Oversight. And they're refusing. One last goddamned time, they're refusing.I read somewhere that, in the end, 700 billion clams works out to about $2300 for each of us, man woman and child. I don't know about you, but I haven't bought a new pair of jeans in about a year and a half. I'm wearing the same sample contact lenses I got at Lens Crafters because I can't afford to order a box just yet, because I'm still paying off other assorted bills and things. The bottom line: MY COOKIE JAR IS MOTHERFUCKING EMPTY, WALL STREET.

Anyway, and it's been said a jillion times already but I like joining the chorus: isn't it completely hysterical to see so many conservatives having honest debates about exactly how much of this billion dollar bailout is acceptable, when a national health care plan that costs a fraction of the bailout is MARX-FASCI-COMMU-CHE-STALIN-STREISAND horrible? Like, we can't spare a penny so your kids can go to the doctor but, OH God you libtards don't understand that the CEO of Goldman Sachs has a standard of living to which he's grown accustomed and if he doesn't have gold flakes in his eggs in the morning he'll have a heart attack and die and you people will be THE MURDERERS AND WE WILL HUNT YOU and you will blame the one armed man and when the train derails you will run run run through the woods but Tommmy Lee Jones is on to you and "I didn't do it!" "I don't care" and then Batman Forever is fucking UNWATCHABLE.

Can he look like a bigger bonehead? Well, yes. Politico (paraphrasing):

John McCain, bragging about his involvement and mocking Sen. Barack Obama, took credit for building a winning coalition – then the vote failed and stocks tanked.

Thanks mainly to McInsane's own rethuglican party, who had a major hissyfit after that mean Nancy Pelosi said howwible things about them.

Initially, McCain went silent, manfully choosing instead to send one of his douchebag advisers out with a helpful statement that blamed Obama:

"This bill failed because Barack Obama and the Democrats put politics ahead of country," McCain adviser Doug Holtz-Eakin said, if by "Barack Obama" you mean John Boehner and by "Democrats" you mean republicans.

After days spent bashing the Illinois Senator, McInsane then had the huevos to say "Senator Obama and his allies in Congress infused unnecessary partisanship into the process."

I'm sorry, what???? But with the insta-polls coming in all over cable news showing it was the rethugs the America-hating public were blaming, it wasn't long before McCain told reporters in Iowa "Now is not the time to fix the blame. It's time to fix the problem." He then went on to work on solvi blame Obama, Dems.

Douche.

All in all, McCain might have been better served by staying out of the mess.

The rush to claim he had engineered a victory now looks like strategic blunder that will prolong the McCain’s campaign’s difficulty in finding a winning message on the economy.

-- via N. S. Sherlock at Duh! News. I notice that, though McNutjob started out taking credit, he's certainly not taking any of the blame now that its failed.

Oh, the heinous remarks by Ms Pelosi are here. You tell me what was so bad that the WATB rethugs had to bail and fuck everything over.

Update: Politico is reporting that the rethugs planned on killing the bailout bill even before Ms Pelosi spoke.

“We don’t believe they had the votes and I think they are covering up the embarrassment of not having the votes. But think about this: 'somebody hurt my feelings so I will punish the country.' I mean that’s hardly plausible. And there were twelve Republicans who were ready to stand up for the economic interest of America but not if anybody insulted them. I’ll make an offer: Give me those twelve people’s names and I will go talk uncharacteristically nicely to them and tell them what wonderful people they are, and maybe they’ll now think about the country.”

In what can surely be described as a confidence inspiring endorsement, Reich-wing man chowder guzzling columnist David BoBo Brooks says Sarahcuda Von Mooselini, aka Juneau Cleaver could "rise to the level of mediocrity" in the upcoming VP debate.In related news, the McWorse campaign has already declared her the winner.

Headline of the day: Facial, Flowers Among Gifts To Palin(Sounds like a perfect date)And she was grateful for the "awesome facial." Just wondering, did it cum with include a complimentary pearl necklace?

"President Bush met with John McCain and Barack Obama. John McCain showed up without running mate Sarah Palin, which is a shame because she actually has a lot of experience with financial matters. You know, she lives right next to a bank." -- Jimmy Kimmel

A CBS source confirms that more footage of Sarah Palin being interviewed by Katie Couric will indeed air this week, in advance of the debate.

The spokeswoman for the Republican Party in Nevada's most populous county was removed from her post Saturday, after she said the Democratic Party made black people "dependent on the government."

Didi Lima, the Clark County GOP communications director, also was removed from her volunteer role as a Hispanic community liaison for John McCain's presidential campaign over the remarks made earlier in the day while working at a McCain campaign booth.

"We don't want (Hispanics) to become the new African-American community," Lima said. "And that's what the Democratic Party is going to do to them, create more programs and give them handouts, food stamps and checks for this and checks for that. We don't want that."

Tiny American flags for everyone! On Sunday, George Stephanopoulis sat down with John McThuselah and talked about the candidate's health care plan:

STEPHANOPOULOS: One of the other points Senator Obama made in the debate that you weren’t able to respond to, he said that, for the first time ever, you would tax health benefits by taking away the deduction that employers now get to provide health benefits.

MCCAIN: Right -- this all began during World War II with price and wage controls. Those damn Prussians... if it weren't for them, we'd all be able to get by now wearing onions on our belts! When I was a lad, before getting captured by the Cong, I'd have to walk twenty miles to buy onions for the family. The good ones, not those fruity little green jobs you liberal commie hippies put on arugula. I don't think you understand, Jim...

STEPHANOPOULOS: George.

MCCAIN: My name is John, you fucking whippersnapper.

STEPHANOPOULOS: No, my name is 'George.'

MCCAIN: That's what I said. I don't think you understand, Joe, that for five and a half years as a prisoner of war, I didn't have health insurance. So these cunts today, they should just quit their damn whining and suck it up.

As the Bush administration attempts to stabilize the nation's economy, we are witness to the final chapter of a period of perverse and dishonest leadership that has used its own crises to justify the expansion of its own power.

The gyrations of the stock market have been dismaying, and the threat to the country's financial institutions -- and everyone who borrows from or invests in them -- is real. Still, the audacity of this administration demanding expanded powers and curtailed accountability is a wonder to behold. The bitter irony is that this crisis warrants dramatic intervention, but President Bush's record makes him difficult to trust even when he's right.

These troubles are about more than a president who is unfaithful to his word. We are seeing the erection of an imperial presidency, immune from oversight when it fights terrorists and when it rescues banks.

George Bush promised humility and delivered arrogance. The next president must not.

Yet "impeachment is off the table." Jeebus.

Update: some dippy mouthbreather (quoted over at instapundit.cum) opines on how we'll all come to revere Bunnypants in a few years: "How will he occupy his time? Roving ambassador? Baseball commissioner? University president?"

Oh… my… gawd. LOLOL. Dude: a grip -- get it! Hopefully the little fucker'll be in prison for war crimes, at the very least.

In his latest column in the horribly-biased NY Times, he chides those who said McNuts was wrong to parachute into DC last week, saying he should continue to talk about his efforts to deal with the economic crisis even though a) he seems to be either obstructing any effort to resolve it, and b) his advisers were/are actively involved in perpetuating it...

... that he should free Caribou Barbie to meet with the media, since she’s a "talented communicator" ...

... and that Obama has "radical associates in his past," specifically Rev. Wright -- even as the stories of Bible Spice's Jew-hating, witchcraft-obsessed pastor are coming out in the blogosphere and youTube.

In a epic duh, he closes with a bizarre non-sequitor involving Joe Biden. Is this guy demented? What a fucking goofball.

On Saturday, after declaring he’d return to Washington to help with the bailout negotiations immediately after [Friday's] debate, John McCain never went to Capitol Hill. In fact, McCain stayed largely holed up in his Arlington apartment, leaving only to go to his campaign headquarters just around the block, the New York Times reports.

Asked why Mr. McCain did not go to Capitol Hill after coming back to Washington to help with negotiations, [McCain adviser] Salter replied that “he can effectively do what he needs to do by phone."

Yep, one of the most important decisions to be made in our time, and Grampy McFusepants decides to just phone it in.

It gets better:

As his colleagues worked on the deal at the Capitol Saturday night, McCain and his wife, Cindy, dined with smug asswipe Joe Lieberman and his wife, at Cafe Mozu inside Washington’s swanky Mandarin Oriental Hotel.

McInsane reams both his VP pick and the media after Bible Spice had the nerve to discuss issues this weekend.

John McCain retracted Sarah Palin's stance on Pakistan Sunday morning, after the Alaska governor appeared to back Sen. Barack Obama's support for unilateral strikes inside Pakistan against terrorists

"She would not…she understands and has stated repeatedly that we're not going to do anything except in America's national security interest," McCain told ABC's George Stephanopoulos of Palin. "In all due respect, people going around and… sticking a microphone while conversations are being held, and then all of a sudden that's—that's a person's position… This is a free country, but I don't think most Americans think that that's a definitve policy statement made by Governor Palin."

In other words, don't listen to her, she has no idea what she's talking about. But if something like this happens to Obama or Biden it'll be fair game and on-the-record.

September 28, 2008

Sweet video! "This time we won' t take more of the same. It's time for a change. Yeah. You're a wolf in sheep's clothing. Dick Cheney in a skirt. Pretend you don't know. You're running from your shadow..."

The marriage of the vice-presidential candidate’s pregnant teenage daughter could lift a flagging campaign.

Inside John McCain’s campaign the expectation is growing that there will be a popularity boosting pre-election wedding in Alaska between Bristol Palin, 17, and Levi Johnston, 18, her schoolmate and father of her baby. “It would be fantastic,” said a McCain insider. “You would have every TV camera there. The entire country would be watching. It would shut down the race for a week.”

McInsane now says he won't be going back to the Hill -- instead he'll negotiate the supposedly all-important bailout crisis (that he had to drop everything for just the other day!) via telephone from his condominium in Arlington, Va. Via fark.com:

"I'd like to send this letter to the Prussian consulate in Siam by aeromail. Am I too late for the 4:30 autogyro?"

I think he's going to telegraph his plan to a type setter, who will put it in a pneumatic tube and have the responses delivered by zeppelin the next day.

You know, for 5 years John McCain didn't have a phone because he was a POW.

Ya know, this plus what we've been seeing the last few days of McCain's face melting, I wonder if he's trying to stay in hiding due to a medical issue.

Chris Matthews: "Who do you want to listen to for 4-8 years? It really is part of how we look at these things. Let's start with John McCain. Do you think he was to troll-like, tonight? You know, too much of a troll? Seriously, do people want to put up with four years of that, of sitting there angrily, grumpily... like a codger?

"I don't want to push you too far, but didn't he seem really contemptuous of his opponent?"

John Howard responds, "He did..."

Matthews: "You want to put up with four years of that?"

Howard: "He hates Obama...Maybe when Obama's not on stage we won't have to put up with that."

"Excuse me," interrupts Matthews, "that's what he thinks of the press. Is every press conference going to be like that? Troll-like performance, angry at the world?"

"Weak, indecisive, blatantly political" -- After reversing on the debate, John McCain looks like John McCan't

The collapse of McCain's Hail Mary intervention capped a tumultuous week which saw the Arizona Democrat's [sic -moron!] lead over Obama evaporate and his running mate deliver a ragged and at times impenetrable TV interview. With economic jitters playing to traditional Democratic dogma, McCain's Big Mo suddenly reverted to his challenger.

In the process, McCain invited questions about his judgment and ability to work his will in Washington if elected.

"This raises the fundamental issue of how a guy who is hated by his own party can govern," fretted a GOP mandarin who worked for several Presidents. "If he can't control the Republicans, how can he run a country?"

Bonus: article compares McInsane to Jimmy Carter and his boneheaded move during the Iranian hostage crisis.

Old and busted: pissing off David LettermanHew hotness: pissing off Frank Rich

Damn. I'm still picking off the soot and charred flesh from today's column in the NY times, and I'm only on the third paragraph.

WHAT we learned last week is that the man who always puts his “country first” will take the country down with him if that’s what it takes to get to the White House.

No, that's just the first one. Then it gets even better.

For all the focus on Friday night’s deadlocked debate, it still can’t obscure what preceded it: When John McCain gratuitously parachuted into Washington on Thursday, he didn’t care if his grandstanding might precipitate an even deeper economic collapse. All he cared about was whether he might save his campaign. George Bush put more deliberation into invading Iraq than McCain did into his own reckless invasion of the delicate Congressional negotiations on the bailout plan.

Right? And yet, that wasn't even the biggest "oh, snap!" moment of this justifiably righteous tirade. It gets sooooo so much better.

It’s then that Angry Old Ironsides McCain suddenly emerged to bark that our financial distress was “the greatest crisis we’ve faced, clearly, since World War II” — even greater than the Russia-Georgia conflict, which in August he had called the “first probably serious crisis internationally since the end of the cold war.” Campaigns, debates and no doubt Bristol Palin’s nuptials had to be suspended immediately so he could ride to the rescue, with Joe Lieberman as his Robin.

Yet even as he huffed and puffed about being a “leader,” McCain took no action and felt no urgency. As his Congressional colleagues worked tirelessly in Washington, he malingered in New York. He checked out the suffering on Main Street (or perhaps High Street) by conferring with Lady Lynn Forester de Rothschild, the Hillary-turned-McCain supporter best known for her fabulous London digs and her diatribes against Obama’s elitism. McCain also found time to have a well-publicized chat with one of those celebrities he so disdains, Bono, and to give a self-promoting public speech at the Clinton Global Initiative.

Dayyum. I really want to buy this man a drink. After a few more incendiary salvos, he closes:

It’s that utter power vacuum that gave McCain the opening to pull his potentially catastrophic display of economic “leadership” last week. He may be the first presidential candidate in our history to risk wrecking the country even before being voted into the Oval Office.

Capitol Hill sources are telling me that senior McCain people are more than concerned about Palin. The campaign has held a mock debate and a mock press conference; both are being described as "disastrous." One senior McCain aide was quoted as saying, "What are we going to do?" The McCain people want to move this first debate to some later, undetermined date, possibly never.

OK, he didn't go with this advice last night, but here's what Sen. Obama should say at the next debate with Psycho McThuselah:

""Experience? Are you fucking kidding me? Let's get that out of the way real quick. The Crypt Keeper over there chose as a running mate a fucking idiot who couldn't find Pakistan on a map even if it had a giant cock-shaped neon arrow pointing at it saying, 'It's here, bitch.'

"[Y]ou keep suckin' away, Johnny Maverick, showin' all that shiny fuckin' experience, as you take 'em all, the cock of the evangelical right, the cock of Karl Rove, the cocks of lobbyists lined up around the block. Yeah, no wonder your cheeks are so goddamn stretched out, from trying to fit two or three in there at the same time. Oh, I'm sorry, Jim, did I offend a war hero? Was I too uppity? Kiss my black ass."

Results from the CNN poll show that Senator Obama won everything but the 'nasty fucktard' category:

Thinking about the following characteristics and qualities, please say whether you think each one better described Barack Obama or John McCain during tonight's debate:

• Was more intelligent: Obama 55%, McCain 30%• Expressed his views more clearly: Obama 53%, McCain 36%• Spent more time attacking his opponent: McCain 60%, Obama 23%• Was more sincere and authentic: Obama 46%, McCain 38%• Seemed to be the stronger leader: Obama 49%, McCain 43%• Was more likeable: Obama 61%, McCain 26%• Was more in touch with the needs and problems of people like you: Obama 62%, McCain 32%• Was a smirking, contemptuous dipshit with major personality issues: McCain 100%

OK, one of those was me. Found this comment over at the Daily Dish, from someone who had been live-blogging the debate:

Obama is doing quite well, especially as compared to some of his clumsy primary performances. McCain is starting to let his contempt for Obama show. He keeps laughing like some sort of disturbed gremlin.

Funny!

"My friends, as a POW I had to walk uphill in the snow both ways for five and a half years. Senator Obama just doesn't understand that."

I'm trying to put together some kind of consensus on the debate, so this may be a work in progress. Senator Obama did great against the more "experienced debater" McInsane, getting off some good ones -- the 'bomb bomb Iran' thing was a hoot! -- but the old coot was not as strong as I thought he would be. He started off looking tired, later his voice shook, and he came across as a whole to be all sneer, eye twitch, sneer, sneer, smirk. Very rude.

Reviews are pouring in from the debate. Lots of focus on the petulant GOP candidate. What's almost funny is how some of the pundit types are acting a little surprised that McCain was so angry and nasty. For Christ sakes, they all know he's got a temper and can be a dick. What's very disturbing is that McCain couldn't control it at the first presidential debate -- a very big event in the campaign. It's not good for McCain when the takeaway for many was his sneer. The sneer and the fact that he couldn't even look at Obama.

I said above that McCain didn't have any freak-out moments. But he did have that sneer and there did seem to be this thing where he was so contemptuous and angry at Obama that he couldn't get himself to make eye contact. I think we'll hear more about that.

Angry, angry, angry. Part of the key here is that McCain is clearly miffed that he even has to debate or run again Obama. He thinks it's an insult.

Here’s the politically incorrect way of phrasing one of the central questions about tonight’s presidential debate: Did John McCain come across as too much of a grumpy old man?

That might not be a nice question, but it’s an important one. Americans like to vote for the nice guy, not the grumbling prophet of doom. Throughout the 90-minute debate, McCain seemed contemptuous of Obama. He wouldn’t look at him. He tried to belittle him whenever possible -- how many times did he work “Senator Obama just doesn’t understand” into his answers? His body language was closed, defensive, tense. McCain certainly succeeded in proving that he can be aggressive, but the aggression came with a smirk and a sneer.

I was over at C 'n' L posting in the live debate thread and a lot of us were saying the same thing. And everytime McInsane got contemptuous, the audience reaction lines at CNN took a dive.

I suspect that women voters especially would be turned off by McCain's sarcastic tone because women do tend to be the conciliators in our society and saw Obama display those conciliatory qualities very well in the debate. Obama looked at McCain, and McCain wouldn't return the eye contact but rather glared or displayed a tight and angry expression.

Despite John McCain’s purchase of internet ads earlier in the day proclaiming victory before he even agreed to participate, the first debate turned out to be a win for Barack Obama. Obama was cool, calm, and presidential. McCain spent the debate searching for ways to take cheap shots against Obama while making several factual errors. Errors ranged from his statement on Eisenhower’s two letters to the names of foreign leaders. John McCain wasn’t even consistent in his attacks.

When radio guy Mike Papantonio tried to remind viewers about McCain's involvement on behalf of Charles Keating, Faux Nooze's pimply weasel Steve Doocy told Papantonio to "put a cork in it" and "pipe down," called him "rude" and demanded he "cut it out." A show producer could be overheard saying "cut his mike."

As Papantonio tries one last time to explain the details of the Keating Five scandal, Doocy again cuts him off.

"This is not the History Channel," he says.

"It has everything to do with what's happening today," Papantonio said before being told to pipe down.

You know, we haven't had too many good days over the past 8 years. But the last two have been beautiful.

Barney Frank on McSenile's bailout theatrics:

"The man's irrelevant to the whole process. No Republican mentioned his name. I'm the only one who raised his name. They winced when I did."

Bonus:

"McCain is Andy Kaufman in his Mighty Mouse costume: 'Here I Come to Save the Day.' He hasn't been involved. He doesn't know anything about it. I didn't see any sign of our Republican colleagues paying any attention to him whatsoever."